


Not Exactly the Ritz-Carlton

by ObliObla



Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Developing Relationship, Drinking, F/M, Gen, Humor, Hurt Lucifer, Light Angst, Season/Series 01, Sharing a Bed
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-19
Updated: 2019-09-19
Packaged: 2020-09-07 22:11:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,661
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20316814
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ObliObla/pseuds/ObliObla
Summary: PostSweet Kicks, Chloe and Lucifer head up to the mountains to interview a lead. Unfortunately, it was Lucifer's lead, and he's still far more interested in 'exploring his mortality' than actually solving crimes...





	1. Chloe's Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

**Author's Note:**

> For Luciferbingo prompt: monkey

“Ugh.” Lucifer turned his nose up at the remnants of a skunk on the side of the freeway as Chloe grabbed his arm and dragged him onto a gravely side road. He glared down at the dust painting his Louboutins. “Why do you have to be so boring?” he asked, surly.

She rolled her eyes. “Uh, there were men with _guns_ shooting at us.” She stared into the dim light of dusk, trying to make out what was in front of her. What they needed was some kind of shelter, but there hadn’t been a single building in the half mile they’d covered trying to avoid the gunmen. A crack of thunder echoed through the little valley they’d found themselves. _Great._

“Yes, that’s what I said. _Boring_.” He kicked an especially large piece of gravel and it skidded across the road.

“Oh, so I should’ve just let you get shot, then?” she asked snidely. “Still trying to ‘explore your mortality’ or whatever?” How were there _no_ outbuildings up in the mountains? Weren’t there supposed to be ski resorts and rich people’s vacation cabins and small, sleepy towns where nothing ever happened?

“Ruining my fun,” he muttered.

She pulled out her phone again, blinking at the screen. No service, still. “Do you have a cell signal?”

He looked at her like she’d sprouted wings. “Haven’t acquired a phone since last week, no.”

“How do you not have a—?” She shook her head. Lucifer hadn’t ever made sense before; he wasn’t liable to start now.

“Why are we running _away_ from your car?” he asked after they’d walked up the road another quarter mile.

She froze in her tracks and turned to him. “Men. Guns. Shooting at us.”

He scoffed and pushed past her. “Only small caliber. We were _fine_.”

She glared at his back as she started walking again. “This is your fault.”

“Oh, is it?” he asked, clearly smirking, though she couldn’t see his face. _Damn him._

“Yes! This was _your_ lead.”

“I thought Anatoly and I left things on good terms!”

She rolled her eyes again. “You thought you left a _drug dealer_ on good terms.”

“I did, actually.” She’d caught up to him and his annoyingly long strides again, and he frowned. “I’ll have to send an apology gift, perhaps.”

“His men shot at us!”

Lucifer shrugged. “What’s a little gunplay between friends?” He glanced over at Chloe and ran his tongue over his teeth, winking.

“_Ugh_.” It was starting to get seriously dark, clouds gathering heavily at the horizon, the occasional distant strike of lightning badly illuminating their surroundings. Yet, still, there was no building in sight. She shivered; without the sun, the temperature had started to drop rapidly.

“Besides, you’re _well_ aware I don’t hold grudges for such petty things as being shot.” He reached down and clutched at his leg dramatically, letting a stricken expression cross his face. “Even if it still hurts ever so.”

She glared at him.

He pouted. “Weren’t you looking for some sort of _shelter_, for whatever reason?”

She was going to kill him. This time she really was going to kill him. “Yeah, cause it’s dark and going to get cold and rain and I don’t want to _freeze_ to death_._”

He stared at her, unblinking. “Then why have we walked past a perfectly decent structure?”

“A what?”

He rolled his eyes—_how dare he steal her move?_—and stopped, pointing behind her. “There.”

She stared into the darkness. “There where?”

“Are you blind? It’s…” And he flounced forward, leaving her to have to jog to keep up.

She nearly tripped over some tree roots as they stomped their way through knee high grass. Eventually, a cabin came into view, dark wood indistinct against the dimness of the surrounding trees.

Lucifer caught at the doorknob, and Chloe heard a click as he turned it. “What?” he asked blankly as he held the door open for her. “It was unlocked.”

_And it must’ve been, right?_

She groped in the darkness for a light switch, but there was nothing.

He reached up into a blackness she couldn’t see and tugged on something. “No electricity.”

She pulled out her phone and turned on the flashlight, eyeing the battery percentage with some concern. The cabin had been small from the outside, but it was positively cramped from within. There were two rooms visible: the sparsely furnished living space they stood in, complete with small kitchenette and central fireplace, and the bedroom, which only a sliver of light escaped into, falling on a rather small bed with a lumpy looking mattress. She walked over to the sink and turned the faucet. Nothing. She shivered again.

“We’ll need firewood.”

Thankfully there was some wood stacked against the wall of the cabin, though the old generator Chloe had discovered tucked into a dusty corner was beyond dead. She frowned as Lucifer started dragging bundles in, complaining about the dust and the mussing of his suit jacket. She’d have to leave some money for what they had taken, what they had used. Chloe was so distracted listening for gunmen in the bushes, that, when she came back to herself, Lucifer was stoking a fire in the grate, and she was sitting in a chair pulled up alongside it.

She held her hands out toward the flames. She must have been colder than she’d thought; her fingers were strangely numb. She almost forgot that Lucifer was there at all, he was so quiet, crouched close—he must have been even colder than she was—staring into the hearth.

She blinked; she’d never seen him this silent, and she boggled at it, but his strangely somber mood disappeared as if it had never been, and he jumped to his feet. “I’m starving,” he announced. “There must be something to eat in this hellhole.” He strode to the small kitchen and started pulling opening drawers and cabinets haphazardly.

“Lucifer, this isn’t… You can’t just… _Stop._”

He froze, turned toward her, and scoffed. “This is, I can, and I _shan’t._” He made to pull more drawers open, but she got up, walked over, and grabbed his arm before he could.

He hissed, jerking away from her hold. He frowned down at his arm. “Oh.”

“_Oh_? Oh, what?” But when she reached for him again, the firelight caught on something on her palm, something sticky and warm and red.

They stood there for a moment before she shook her head. “Wait, did you get _shot_?”

He blinked. “It appears so.”

“And you didn’t notice?” It wasn’t that uncommon, she knew, for adrenaline to drown out pain; but he must have been shot nearly an hour ago.

He shrugged.

“Sometimes I think you aren’t even human,” she muttered under her breath, grabbing him by the other arm and dragging him back to the fireplace.

“That’s because I’m _not_,” he sing-songed infuriatingly. Or maybe she was just infuriated.

She sighed and glared down at the wound; she could hardly see it. “Ok, take your shirt off so I can— Not your _pants_!"

He smirked at her. “Oh, but didn’t you like what you saw, darling?”

She rolled her eyes, yet again, and batted his hands away from his belt buckle. “The jacket. The shirt. _Now_.” If she had to treat her ostensibly adult partner like a literal child, then she would treat her ostensibly adult partner like a literal child.

He sighed like it was some great undertaking and started to unfasten his cufflinks.

She went into the bedroom, holding her phone out again. There was a small attached bathroom; the toilet was drained, and there was nothing she could use to disinfect or bind a wound. She shook her head and headed back to the kitchenette to—_carefully_—check the drawers. She crouched and pulled open the cabinet under the sink; and there, behind the pipework, she found her prize.

“Ooh, detective, now you’re talking my language.” Jacket off, but shirt still on, he held out his hand like she might just give him the bottom shelf rotgut she’d found.

“We’re not going to _drink_ this, Lucifer.”

He huffed. “Well, _you’re_ not.” He started stripping off his button down, and she studiously avoided looking at any of the revealed skin, instead grabbing his jacket and draping it over the small table. He stuck his tongue between his teeth again and leered.

“It’s to disinfect the wound,” she explained as patiently as she could manage, “so you don’t get an infection. Now, sit.” She pointed at the chair.

“I’m not a dog_._”

“_Sit._”

He complied, pouting again, laying his arm down on the table, shirt clutched in his free hand.

She sat in the other chair and held her phone’s flashlight up to the wound. It was a graze, three inches long, and had apparently gouged out a decent chunk of flesh.

_How hadn’t he noticed this?_

The edges were scorched dark, and blood, slowly clotting, still sluggishly wept from the wound.

She unstoppered the bottle of alcohol. “This is gonna hurt.”

He grinned. “Promise?”

_Christ, this guy._ She shook her head. “Just don’t move.”

He smirked, but, thankfully, remained silent, watching her with eyes that caught the flames blazing in the grate. For a single, nebulous moment, she almost believed what he kept saying, that he really wasn’t human, that he was, truly, the Devil.

The alcohol poured from the bottle almost incidentally, and the stillness broke with his quiet grunt and the clenching of his jaw. When she judged the wound as clean as she could manage, she stood back up, nearly missing his low groan.

She bit her lip. “I have no idea what to wrap this in.”

He considered her for a second before knocking his ruined jacket to the floor with a displeased sigh. He took the hem of his shirt in his hands and started tearing it into strips. When he was finished, he dropped the cloth onto the table and offered his arm.

She stared.

“What?” he asked.

She shook her head, ignored the weirdness, as usual, and got to work, weaving a simple bandage before wrapping it around his arm. His skin was strangely hot, and she frowned. Was he already getting an infection? She wasn’t sure if she had—

He leaned into her touch and pressed closer, lips only an inch from her torso. He looked up at her, apparently waiting for something.

She blinked. "What the hell are you doing?"

He frowned, but pulled away. "Isn't this how this works? I’m fairly certain I’ve seen this movie."

"This is reality, Lucifer," she said flatly.

"Is it?" he asked, eyes sparkling.

She groaned, staring up at the ceiling indistinctly lit by the flickering flames. "I swear I'm gonna shoot you _in_ your bullet wound."

“Ooh, do it.” He sounded so honestly enthusiastic she could only stare at him.

She settled back on the other chair and resumed trying to warm her hands in front of the fire.

He scuffed his feet against the floor.

She ignored him.

He did it again, louder.

“_What_?”

“I’m _hungry_,” he whined. He eyed the whiskey now sitting on the floor by her leg.

“I thought you said hungry, not ‘annoyingly sober’.” She made air quotes in his direction, and he huffed.

“There’s no food here. I mean, what kind of hospitality is that?”

“We broke into this place.”

“So?”

“_So_,” she said, the remnants of her patience unthreaded with his shirt, “go find your own food somewhere.” She waved a hand vaguely.

He huffed again and stood. “Fine.” He stomped over to the door and walked out.

She stared at the door as it swung closed from the wind and shook her head. If Lucifer wanted to wander around in the middle of nowhere, in a storm, with possible gunmen hiding in the bushes, that was his own business. Chloe was hungry too, but she ignored it, instead wandering over to the only other piece of furniture in this room—a bookshelf. There were trinkets and rocks and, shoved into a corner of shelving, a small, threadbare sock monkey.

Her eyes started to burn, and she blinked deliberately, trying to tamp down on the sudden pain in her chest. Her thoughts drifted to places that clenched at her heart. All they had to do was shelter in place until the night—and the rain that had begun beating gently against the windows—ended. The morning would bring light and warmth, and she had few concerns that her car wouldn’t be surrounded by reinforcements who had tracked it up the mountain. It would all, most likely, be absolutely _fine_, but still…her monkey didn’t know where she was, and Chloe knew she’d be afraid.

Chloe was sitting in an awkward, contemplative silence when the door slammed back open. She jumped, hand going to her weapon, but it was only Lucifer, shrouded in darkness and wind-blown raindrops.

“Bloody useless wankers and their terrible tastes,” he muttered to himself, flopping onto the free chair and scattering his bounty in front of them. “Whatever survivalist nutter who lives here has a shed full of old military rations.”

Chloe poked at one, annoyed at Lucifer’s antics but desperately glad for the distraction. The package’s dull brown exterior seemed slightly damp. She thought about complaining, thought about telling him to put the food back, but her stomach rumbled painfully, and she bit her tongue.

He dug through them for a second and pulled a few out. “These look palatable to you?”

She frowned down at them. “Probably?”

He hummed and started tearing them open, setting the trays on the edge of the hearth.

The beef ravioli was, in Lucifer’s words, “rather uninspiring”, and the hash browns were truly terrible, but at least they were heated by the fire and mostly tasted like actual food. In a moment of inspiration he was far too smug about, Lucifer soaked the little fruitcake in the bottom shelf whiskey and managed something halfway enjoyable. At least it was so boozy that Chloe began to enjoy it despite herself.

She felt much warmer when she returned to the bookshelf to browse the few books stuffed onto the bottom shelf. There was little more than reference manuals, nothing she could bring herself to try to read. She shook her head and stood up, finding Lucifer less than a foot from her, weirdly quiet, staring at her.

“What?”

He tilted his head before whatever trance he was in broke, and he licked his lips. “Still better than the c-rations I had in Vietnam.”

She opted to ignore _that_ entirely, instead pushing past him to clean up what she could of the mess they’d made, stacking the uneaten food on the small table.

Lucifer sighed behind her. “You humans and your money. Right, look, here.” He picked up his stained and bloodied jacket from the floor and reached into an interior pocket, withdrawing a silver money clip. He grabbed several hundred dollar bills and dropped them onto the bookshelf. “_There_.”

She shook her head and added a few more pieces of wood to the fireplace. _Rich people._ The flames dwindled for a moment before they rose, beginning to consume the new firewood, and a new wave of heat washed over her. She stifled a yawn, badly.

“Bedtime, darling?” Lucifer was leering again.

_No one would hear the gunshot, or find the body. Not this far out… Focus, Chloe._ “_I’m_ going to bed. By myself. Alone_._”

“And where will _I_ sleep?” he asked, mock-simpering. It was unfair that he could look so sleazy and so much like a kicked puppy at the same time.

Annoyance and a vague sense of chivalry warred in Chloe’s head. She sighed. “Look, _you_ can take the bed, and I’ll”—she glanced around—“figure something out.”

He shrugged. “We could always _share_ the bed.”

She nodded to herself, then scowled. “You’re hilarious.”

He shivered exaggeratedly. “It’s just...so _cold_, Detective. We may have to share body heat.”

“We can share my boot up your ass.”

“Oh, yes, _please_.” He pressed his tongue into his cheek lasciviously.

She buried her head in her hands and groaned. “You’re impossible.”

“Thank you,” he said primly. He headed into the bedroom and sighed at the accommodations. “Though I suppose I _have_ slept worse places.”

She scoffed. “Like where? I doubt you're the sort of person who would stay anywhere with less than a four star rating.”

He turned around and sat on the edge of the mattress. “Five, if we're talking about hotels. But, no. This floor”—he kicked at it—“could hardly be worse than your average Paleolithic cave."

She blinked. “A cave.”

He shook his head. “Where do you think many of your forbearers stayed, Detective? There were no Ritz-Carltons at the dawn of humanity.”

She rolled her eyes and joined him in the bedroom.

He frowned as she grabbed a pillow and blanket from the bed. “Are you really going to sleep on the floor just to prove a point?”

“Oh, right, because _you’ve_ never done anything ridiculous to prove a point before.” She kicked her shoes off and removed her holster, tucking her sidearm into the rickety bedside table.

“So you admit it, then?” He removed his own shoes, watching her.

She looked up at him from where she’d settled on the floor. “Just sleep.”

He shook his head, snagged a pillow and lay on the ground, looking slightly cramped, stuck, as he was, between the bed frame and the bathroom. He steepled his fingers together and stared up at the ceiling.

“We’re seriously doing this?” she asked—whether him, the universe, or herself, she wasn’t certain.

“Apparently so,” he sighed, turning onto his other side, away from her, and she was met, once again, with the scars.

He had, now that she was thinking about it, been very careful to avoid turning his back on her after he’d removed his shirt, choosing to shuffle sideways or, at least, walk fast enough she hardly had time to consider them. But there they were, even more mangled and awful than she remembered—burns so long and deep she could almost hear the screams she imagined must have been torn from his throat when they were branded into his flesh.

In the shadows of flames dancing across the mottled skin, she saw a child made to kneel, a faceless man standing above him. A old iron, perhaps, drawn cherry-red from the fire to press against the boy’s back as his body jerked and tensed and…

The blanket rustled as Lucifer tugged at it, pulling it up over his shoulders, hiding the scars from view. But Chloe could still seem them, shimmering with the darkness of memory and the fog of uncertainty even as her eyelids grew heavy, and she succumbed to a restless sleep.

Chloe woke with a jolt to a crack of thunder that shook the foundations of their little cabin. Her joints were stiff from the cold and from her position, and she stretched them out as best she could without losing the little bit of heat trapped beneath the blanket. Lucifer had apparently woken as well, and she watched as he stripped off his blanket. He stood, grabbed the fire poker, and stoked the dying fire back to some semblance of life.

A wave of warmth washed over her, and she barely managed to bite back a moan at the sensation. She tried to burrow back into her meager bed dressings, but whatever vaguely comfortable position she’d found before eluded her.

“Just take the bed, Detective,” he said wearily, and she lifted her head to look at him. He was still standing, poker trailing against the floor, frowning down at her.

“I’m fine,” she said immediately.

He blinked at her disapprovingly, dropping the poker back against the wall. _Don’t lie_, echoed in her mind in his annoyingly certain tone.

She scowled and got up, immediately feeling the cold on her skin. The rain was beating down relentlessly, now, and she fixed her glare on the window before looking back at Lucifer; he was grinning at her acquiescence. “Don’t look so pleased with yourself,” she said with a huff.

He chuckled and lay back down on the floor.

She threw the pillow and blanket back onto to the bed before crawling in and pulling the comforter over herself. Though the mattress was lumpy, it was infinitely more comfortable than the floor had been. She glanced down at Lucifer. He was awkwardly rearranging his limbs in the small space beside the bed. She watched him for another moment. As infuriating as he was, as many professional boundaries he’d crossed, she did trust him. Sort of. Kind of. And the floor _was_ cold.

“Come on, then,” she said quietly, biting her lip.

He eyed her warily. “Really?”

“Yes, really.”

He stood, set his pillow back against the headboard, and settled next to her. The bed was too small for them to have any real separation. He bent his knees to keep his feet from sticking off the edge, before shuffling back when his leg pressed, briefly, against hers.

She glared at him in the dimness. “If you try anything I’ll shoot you. Again.”

He frowned in something far less exuberant than his usual manner, and his voice, when he spoke, was more serious than she’d ever heard, even when he promised to never lie to her. “I would never touch you without your consent. I swear it.”

They stared at each other for a long, uncertain moment before he cleared his throat. “Besides, it’ll make it all much more satisfying when you finally give in to this undeniable thing between us.”

She rolled her eyes, feeling the strain of exhaustion keenly, but settled deeper into the mattress. It really was a hell of a lot warmer, and the sound of the thunderstorm outside was far less harsh, nearly pleasant combined with Lucifer’s slow, calm breaths. She felt herself drift off with surprising speed, and the last thing she saw were his eyes, glinting with firelight.

Chloe woke to gentle sunlight filtering through the curtains. She was warm and strangely well-rested. In her semi-awareness she felt something shake against her, and she smoothed her palms against it. A back, it seemed, and, as she woke fully, slowly stroking down an arm, she realized what was happening.

She had apparently pressed herself shoulder to ankle against Lucifer, who hadn’t moved an inch from his position on the edge of the bed, though he was wracked with shivers she suspected had nothing to do with the cold. His eyes were closed tightly, and he was grimacing in his sleep.

One of her hands was resting on his wrist, the other was splayed out over the roughened skin of his back where the scars lay, and she froze. She had not signed up for this. She had _not_ signed up for—

He made a soft, aching noise.

Damn him_._ Every time she was ready to drop him and his bullshit entirely, his walls would come down, and something would tighten painfully in her chest. And then they’d shoot right back up, and he would make her feel like an ass for trying to care. And it was happening again.

_Damn him._

He was moving in his sleep now, shuddering against her hands. He gasped, and his eyes flew open, wide with lack of recognition and the edge of fear. He panted heavily as they stared at each other for a moment before he seemed to come back to himself. His expression flattened out, and his lip curled up into a smirk as he took in their position.

“Oh, my,” he breathed with false confidence, so close his breath caressed her cheek.

“No,” Chloe said immediately. _Damn him, it was happening again._

“Detective, I never knew you cared.” The words curled around her ears and she nearly leaned into his heat before she jerked herself back. _Don’t fall for it, Chloe._

“I don’t,” she said sharply. She felt her cheeks heat up, and she rolled away, sitting up to grab her boots and yank them back on as quickly as possible, strapping her gun back to her hip.

He chuckled quietly behind her. “Oh, no, you can’t take it back now. Not how you clung so gently. You were concerned for me, weren’t you, my dear?”

“I was _not._”

“The detective doth protest too much, methinks.”

She buried her head in her hands. She was never going to live this down.


	2. Cabin Fever

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chloe is tired, Lucifer doesn’t much appreciate feeling trapped, and other shoes have a terrible habit of dropping at the worst possible time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to [Nia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/emynii/pseuds/emynii) for wrangling this into shape!

“Let’s _go_, Detective,” Lucifer sing-songed, rolling up the sleeves on the oversized sweater he’d stolen from their unwitting host, rubbing at his arm idly. Chloe had checked his wound after her cheeks stopped burning from the embarrassment of waking up pressed against him, but her memory must have made it seem worse. It was, now that she saw it in the light of day, barely a scratch; she hadn’t even bothered trying to rebandage it. She started stacking the maple sausage MRE trays onto the others they’d eaten. He had insisted they have breakfast—“_I refuse to go hungry because of your human sense of propriety”_—and it seemed easier to just go along with it.

It didn’t hurt that she was hungry too. She touched her fingers to her lips as she rolled her eyes for the first—but most certainly not last—time today; they were chapped. _Ugh._ At least they would get picked up soon.

Or, they should have. Her phone may not have service, but the GPS was working fine. And surely _someone_ had tracked it when they hadn’t shown back up at the precinct yesterday. She checked the battery—43 percent. It was already on low power mode, and she sighed, tucking it back into her pocket. She walked to the door, pushing past Lucifer, who stared at her blankly, and opened it.

Nothing.

The storm had been over for hours, so why wasn’t anyone here?

_Focus, Decker,_ she told herself. There were plenty of reasons why they weren’t just waiting outside. There was no reason to panic. What she needed was more information. But how, without wandering around the woods with potential gunmen? She frowned and tapped her foot on the floor. She put her hair up in a haphazard, messy bun for something to do with her hands.

“Detective, what _are_ you doing?” Lucifer asked, and she shook her head.

“I need…some way to…a radio,” she finished distractedly, listening for gunmen, again, suddenly anxious with the door hanging open. “I need a radio.”

He blinked. “Well, why didn’t you say so?” And he flounced out the door, heading for the small shed where he’d found the food with as much concern as he’d had wading into a gang war.

_What did she do to deserve this guy?_

At least he came back with an actual radio in hand, proudly offering it to her like a cat with a dead mouse.

She took it, hit the on button, and frowned again. _You’ll get lines,_ her mom’s voice whispered, and she tried to ignore the annoyance it caused, the ache it caused. She popped the back open to find the batteries white and crusty with acid leeching. “Fuck,” she said quietly.

“Ooh, such filthy language,” he said, with his most infuriating smirk yet.

“We need batteries.” Maybe if she ignored him he’d go away. She saw the scars on his back again, saw the curly haired boy in her mind, shoved to the ground, screaming and flailing as the iron came down, and she tried to ignore that too.

For once, he picked up the initiative, apparently rejoicing in digging through all of a stranger’s worldly possessions while Chloe leveraged out the old batteries and tried to clean the receptacle of the worst of the residue.

“Batteries,” he said simply, dropping them into her hand.

She stuck them in and turned the radio on. Lucifer wandered off again. She fiddled with it, going through the most common police frequencies, hearing nothing. She sighed. Unless they were actively broadcasting, she wouldn’t hear anything. She’d just have to keep checking. But for now…

“For now,” she said, regretting her words before she could even say them, “we stay.”

Lucifer pouted. Chloe set the radio on the table and sat down, wishing desperately for anything _at_ _all_ to do. She stared into the empty grate and sighed, shivering slightly.

Lucifer’s shoe squeaked against the floor as he headed for the door again. “I’ll get some more firewood,” he said, apparently in another of his mercurial moods.

“You do that,” she said vaguely, grabbing the radio, going through the frequencies again, as if anything could have changed in the last minute she’d been sitting here. But it made her heart hurt less when she had something to do with her hands.

* * *

It was noon, and still nothing.

Lucifer had become increasingly agitated, but had, at least, opted to stay inside and hadn’t run off. Again. He had gone through every possession, however inconsequential, of the poor guy whose house they’d stolen, but Chloe no longer had the energy to try to stop him.

She had, at least, gotten him to lay most of the contents of his money clip on the top of the short bookshelf.

He drummed his fingers against his knee as she tried the frequencies again. “Why don’t we just—?” He bit off the end of his sentence, starting up the motion again.

“Your friend Anatoly might be waiting for us in the woods, Lucifer.” Chloe sounded even wearier than she felt. Her head hurt, and she pressed her fingertips against her forehead. She knew they probably needed water, but every gust of wind make her tense and reach for her holster, _Surely_, someone would come soon.

“I cannot abide this interminable inaction,” he muttered to himself.

“Yeah, well, join the goddamn club.” She rested her head in her hands, listening to the blood pound in her veins.

He muttered something that sounded like, “annoyingly vulnerable,” and, “this is your bloody fault,” and she ground her palms harder against her eyes.

A crack of thunder shook the cabin. The room darkened with the clouds in the sky. Lucifer sighed, pulling out his lighter, leaning down to the fireplace.

Chloe grabbed the radio again.

* * *

The radio remained silent, the sun went down, and the storm increased in intensity.

Lucifer was tapping his foot against the floorboards, over and over. He’d twisted his ring around his finger so many times Chloe thought it might chafe when she broke the anxious silence. “So, why’d you come here anyway?”

“What, to Earth?” he asked, like it was a perfectly normal question.

“Uh...to L.A.?”

He shrugged, now messing with a cuff of the overlarge shirt, pushing it up, letting it fall back over his palm. “For the pun, mostly.”

She blinked. “The Devil in the city of angels?”

“Precisely.” He grinned. “And the weather is nice. Well, when I’m not up in the bloody mountains, anyway.”

“You, ah, like it warm then?” she asked awkwardly. That damn sock monkey she’d seen the night before was at the corner of her vision, continuously reminding her of things she couldn’t do anything about. She shifted in her chair so she couldn’t see it anymore.

He tried a leer, but it lay flat on his face. “I... It’s a bit like Hell, really. Dry, hot”—he chuckled—“yawning with desperation and despair.”

The mood had shifted, again, when she’s been distracted. She stammered a bit in reply. “D-do you ever miss it? Home, I mean.”

He frowned. “I-I...” He seemed lost for words in a way he hadn’t been since she’d seen the scars the first time, and he stared at her like he’d never seen her before.

She should stop, let him drag her into lighter topics, but he was nearly maudlin, staring into the fire again, and that damn monkey was glaring a hole in the back of her skull.

She sighed. “We had a cabin up in the mountains when I was a kid. Nicer than this, though mom still complained.” She shook her head, smiling at the memory. “My dad taught me how to start a fire, build a lean-to, make simple traps...”

She sniffed. “After he died, she sold it. I haven’t seen it since— Hey, are you ok?”

His fingers were drumming increasingly violently against his knee. At her question, his head jerked up, and he smiled thinly. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

She watched him clench his jaw. “Cause...you’re obviously not?”

“Detective,” he said curtly. “I. Am. F—” He bit back the last word, looking away.

“I thought you said you’d never lie to me.”

He stood so abruptly the chair crashed to the floor, the flames lending a strange red tint to his eyes. She startled back at the sound, and he flinched, turning away, heading toward the door.

“Wait!” Chloe said, before her brain caught up to what had happened. She got up, but when he shied away as she tried to approach, she stopped, holding her hands up neutrally.

“Why?” Lucifer asked, with a blankness she didn’t believe for a moment.

“Uh...because I don’t want you to die in a mudslide?” Or by gunshot, or any of the myriad other reasons he shouldn’t wander off in the middle of the night.

He scoffed, leaning against the wall. “I suppose my services might be—“

“Not—” She bit her lip. “I don’t want _you_ to die.”

He stared at her with an unidentifiable emotion on his face that might’ve been disbelief. “Fine,” he said roughly after watching her for another minute. He walked over to the fallen chair, righted it, and slumped back into it.

She sighed. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“Not particularly.” He started watching the flames again, fingers twitching, hands clenching.

At least, she reckoned, he wasn’t out getting himself killed. She wandered over to the kitchenette. The cupboards were nearly bare; even Lucifer would probably turn his nose up at the murky jars of what had probably, once, been pickles. She dug through the jars, not sure what she was looking for except that her mouth was dry and her head was far too full of troubling thoughts.

“Yes!” she cried as she pulled out a jar full of clear liquid. She unscrewed the lid and wrinkled her nose a bit as the strong fumes wafted over her face. “Lucifer, see what I—”

She nearly ran into him, looming half an inch behind her. She put her hand against his chest to get some space between them, and he grinned down at her. “Naughty, naughty, Detective. Whatever happened to propriety?”

She rolled her eyes and pushed past him. “Shut up, Lucifer.”

He chuckled as they settled back in front of the fireplace. He tried to grab the jar, but she pulled away, splashing a little onto the flames. It flared blue for a moment before burning up, and she nodded to herself, satisfied it was _probably_ safe to drink. At least, safe enough to be worth the risk to not have to be sober for another minute of awkwardness. It was a trick her dad had taught her. She blinked and shook her head, taking a drink.

The moonshine burned. A lot.

She choked a bit as she swallowed it down, handing the jar to Lucifer and wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.

He took a swig and sighed in satisfaction. “This is awful.”

She grabbed it back and took another drink; everything was already starting to gently blur. “It really is.”

They looked at each other and burst into laughter.

* * *

Half the jar in, and Chloe was feeling _wonderful._ She was warm, curled up on the floor in front of the fireplace. The thunder and rain were only gentle background music lulling her into a lovely stupor. She took another drink and passed the jar to Lucifer, who chuckled and took a swig. He set it down between them, and lounged back.

“So what…?” She lost her train of thought and shook her head. Bad plan. That was a bad plan. She blinked away the nausea, took another drink—for confidence, or something like it—and tried again. “So what’s your _deal_ anyway?”

“Hmm, darling?” he asked indistinctly, fingers twitching in the air like he was trying to conduct the flames.

She stared at his hand for a moment before her eyes lost focus, and she let them drift closed. “Are you, like, Larry Morningstar, the son of a plumber from Con…from Con…?”

“From _where_, precisely?” he asked, laughing. She heard him take another drink before he wiped his face with a rustle of fabric.

She waved a hand vaguely in front of her. “You know what I mean. Who _are_ you?”

Lucifer frowned so dramatically Chloe swore she could hear it, prying open her eyes to look at him. “I _told_ you,” he said, annoyed past the veil of drunkenness. “I’m the Devil.”

He reached for the jar, but she was quicker, snatching it up and pouring some down her chin in her haste to drink. She passed it to him, and he shook his head. She sighed in as much exasperation as she could muster. “But how am I supposed to believe that _you_—douchebag playboy with a smirk and a snide line for any situation—are the actual, goddamned Devil?”

And all his good humor disappeared in an instant. “Because I wouldn’t lie to you,” he said flatly. He stood abruptly, stumbled, but recovered, and stalked into the bedroom, then into the adjoining bath, closing the door behind him.

Chloe tried to get up, nearly fell over, and settled for inching slowly across the floor. She clung to the doorframe into the bedroom to leverage herself against the wall outside the bathroom. She slumped and slapped a hand over her mouth; the moving had been _not_ good, and her head hurt again. Or _more_. “Lucifer…?” she whispered.

She heard a rustling from the other side of the door, but he didn’t speak.

She bit her lip. “I don’t think you’re _lying_, I just—”

“You think I’m delusional.” It barely sounded like his voice, muffled as it was, and edged with panic. His penthouse, she recalled suddenly, didn’t seem to have many doors. Was filled with light and air and _space_. And this place they were stuck in was too small for her, even. For him…?

He interrupted her tumultuous thoughts. “You know, I don’t blame you, Detective. None of you believe me. Not unless I…” He exhaled roughly.

There was such resignation in his tone that the words spurred her into grabbing at the doorknob, pushing at it, but finding it stuck.

“Bloody hell!” Lucifer took a hasty step back, and Chloe fell forward. He caught her, stepped around the door, and lifted her up to her feet. She swayed but stabilized her stance.

“Uh…” she said distinctly. He was so warm under her palms where she was bracing herself, and she leaned into him, before he pulled her hands away.

He led her to the bed while her brain whirred. She had definitely drunk too much. She sat on the edge while he stared at her.

“You’re not going to die, are you?” he asked bluntly.

She snorted and tried to roll her eyes, but it required far too much concentration, so she settled instead for closing them again, lying back on the bed. It was soft and comfortable. “I don’t, you know,” she said softly.

“What?” She felt the mattress dip on the other side.

She pressed her head deeper into the pillows, haphazardly pulling a blanket over herself. “Think you’re crazy.”

“Then what _do_ you believe?”

But if she had an answer, it was lost to the rain beating down on the window, to the rush of sleep cascading over her mind.

* * *

“Did something die in my mouth?” Lucifer mumbled from somewhere above Chloe’s head.

She dragged her face from the pillow and shoved at the strangely heavy comforter. It grunted as it fell away. That was strange. She blinked her eyes open to see Lucifer, knocked to the side, splayed out on the edge of the bed.

He clutched his head and groaned dramatically. “What is this barbaric pain behind my eyes?”

“What, you’ve never had a hangover before?” She laughed and immediately regretted it, clutching her own head. She let herself fall back to the bed, and curled up in the fetal position. Why did she have to drink so much? And why did she have to ask such stupid questions while she was drunk? The memories were coming back, now, and every one of them made her want to hide under the covers and never come out again.

“Must be part of my burgeoning mortality,” he muttered before rolling out of bed. She heard him stagger and stumble against the wall.

“You ok?” she asked, burying her head deeper into blanket. Maybe _he’d_ forgotten; she clung to that notion.

He sighed. “I’ll live, I suppose.” He wandered into the main room.

Chloe seriously considered trying to go back to bed, but her head hurt far too much. She’d only just managed to sit upright when Lucifer reappeared in the doorway, drinking deeply from what remained of the moonshine. He wiped his mouth and held the jar out for her. “Hair of the dog?”

“That is a _terrible_ idea,” she said, taking it from him and joining him in finishing off the dregs. It tasted so much worse than it had the day before it was almost impressive. She stared at the jar in her hand for a moment before the realities of their situation caught up to her. She pulled herself out of bed and immediately tripped over her own feet, falling back onto the mattress.

Lucifer laughed, high and clear, and Chloe resigned herself to the bed for the time being. “Could you get the radio?” Her voice was muffled but he seemed to understand as he pressed it into her hand a moment later.

She slapped at the dial and tested all the standard frequencies, again. And there was nothing, _again._ She barely kept herself from throwing the damn thing across the room. “Goddammit!”

“Yes, it is probably His fault,” Lucifer said, as if by automatic reflex. He seemed to be trying to flatten his hair in the cracked bathroom mirror. Two days sans product and the addition of a thunderstorm had left his hair wild and entirely untamed.

She tried not to giggle as she watched his exasperation—the mood seemed to shift so rapidly when he was around it made her head spin, or maybe that was just the hangover and the dehydration—but a few errant chuckles managed to slip out, and he turned to glare at her without heat.

“What?” she asked, and giggled again.

“Does my pain amuse you, Detective?”

She shrugged. “You’re adorable.”

He blinked and shook his head, curls flopping to his forehead. His expression seemed torn between offense and another trademark leer. The leer won. “Is that so?”

She nodded, trying to keep a straight face. “Practically cherubic.”

He opened his mouth; she threw a pillow at him.

He huffed at her, but then froze, head tilting, fake outrage and real amusement both disappearing. “Someone’s here,” he said quietly.

She got up immediately, swallowing back her nausea, and pulled her sidearm out of the bedside table where she had, thankfully, actually remembered to put it. She started edging toward the window, but Lucifer’s hand shot out, and he caught her, gently, by the wrist. “Not the police. They’re speaking Russian.”

She checked her gun to make sure it was loaded as she hunkered behind the bed. She only had six rounds left. Lucifer was still standing, so she grabbed his hand and yanked him down next to her. It wasn’t great cover, but it was all they had. Hiding in the bathroom would give them no place to move to. He grumbled, and she glared at him. “Are those your friends?” she asked roughly, trying to tamp down on her panic.

"I'd imagine so," he muttered, far too calm, as he always seemed to be in dangerous situations. She could hear them, now, speaking in low voices, approaching the front door. She considered the windows, but they were too small and would be too loud and take too long to open. There was only one real way in and out.

She bit her lip. “It'd be a good time for your ninja bartender to show up.”

"Yes, well...” He glanced at her almost apologetically.

She took a deep, calming breath that didn’t calm her down in the slightest. But talking seemed to help, so she continued, “If you get me killed, I'll come back and haunt you."

He frowned. "That's not how it works."

"_Try me_," she hissed.

He shuffled around the edge of the mattress, ducked through the doorway, and grabbed the fire poker. The tip still glowed faintly orange from the dying embers. There was a rustling noise from outside, and he joined her quickly behind their meager cover.

“I am _not_ gonna die with a goddamn hangover,” she whispered to herself, wishing she could just bury her head back under the covers.

“I won’t let you.” He said it so softly she thought she might have imagined it, but when she looked over, he was staring at her with oddly serious eyes.

Then the door slammed open, and everything went to hell.

A bullet whizzed overhead and shattered the lamp on the bedside table. Chloe’s ears rang, but she ignored it, ducking her head. Their position was horribly precarious, but at least there was only one way in. She had to believe that gave them enough of an advantage to survive this.

“Anatoly,” Lucifer said above the din, “you’ve been very naughty, haven’t you?” He appeared to be preparing to _stand up_, and Chloe grabbed him by the back of the neck and held him in place until he seemed to get the message.

“What the hell are you doing?” she whispered, but his response was lost to another series of gunshots that stippled over the top of the mattress. Trixie’s face swam in front of her eyes, and she blinked rapidly. She was _not_ going to die here.

“Come on, you cowards!” Lucifer was still talking. _Why_ was Lucifer still talking? “Stop hiding behind your little metal clubs.”

More gunshots.

But Chloe was ready this time, and, when the air was still ringing from the noise, she leapt up, looking left and right. There were two of them that she could see, crowded in the doorway, though neither was Anatoly himself, and she heard floorboards creak near the fireplace. She dived back behind the bed, narrowing avoiding a bullet that pinged into the wall behind them.

“Four,” she breathed.

He caught her gaze and tilted his head again, nostrils flaring. “Five.” He pointed at a spot on the near wall. “There’s a diminutive chap just behind there with _horrendous _breath.”

In that moment, Chloe decided that whatever she believed, she _had_ to trust her partner. She aimed her firearm at the place Lucifer had indicated on the wall, counted to two—she didn’t have time for three—and fired where she suspected center mass would be. There was a shout, and she heard a thump on the other side of the wall as the man fell.

While the other men were distracted by their compatriot’s sudden collapse, she stood, let off three shots, and crouched back behind their shelter. One of them hit its target, judging by the sound.

Two down—though not out—three standing. And two bullets.

“You bitch!” _That_ was Anatoly, only now joining his men in the living room. The door slammed shut behind him.

“Now, now, there’s no need for that kind of language,” Lucifer said, casually, almost _lazily_, and Chloe made to hush him again, but he was slinking away, pressing himself against the wall, sliding closer to the doorway, finger to his lips. She shuffled over to take up the spot where he’d been crouching, wishing she could see better through the open doorway, wishing she could still see Lucifer.

There was a beat of silence, two, then—

A man screamed, a gun went off, and Chloe dived to the side, desperate to see what was going on, but too afraid to stand.

Lucifer was standing in the doorway holding a large, bulky man by the shoulders and appeared to be using him as a human shield before he shoved him forward. The man went flying, like Joe Hanson had, barreling into someone she couldn’t see. He slipped fully into the room, and Chloe took the opportunity to shuffle-crawl to the wall, pressing her back against it.

There was another gunshot, and, in the aftershocks, she heard Lucifer hiss. “You shot me again!” He sounded more annoyed than in pain, but something clutched at Chloe’s heart regardless. But her training wouldn’t let her leap into a situation she was incapable of assessing.

A different man yelled, and his steps were heavy on the floor, but with a loud, metallic _clang_ he fell to the floor. Another man was thrown against the interior wall hard enough it shook against Chloe’s side.

Lucifer hummed, distinct even above the sounds of panting and groaning from the various gunmen on the floor. “Alone at—” There was a scrambling noise that was abruptly cut off by the crunch of bones, probably underfoot, and a piteous moan.

“My _hand…_”

Lucifer sighed and spoke again. “As I was _saying_… Alone at last.”

“Ah, Lucifer, my dear friend,” Anatoly said nervously. He was, apparently, the only one left standing. “Maybe we just… forget all this happened. You _are_ an excellent customer, after all.”

“Then why did you shoot at me, my… dear friend?”

Anatoly sputtered.

Lucifer snarled, and the temperature in the cabin seemed, somehow, to rise, as if the fireplace had rekindled.

“You-you started buying from the Salvadorians!” Anatoly cried.

Chloe blinked—_how many drugs was he buying that his patronage was this important?_

She heard the fabric of Lucifer’s borrowed shirt rustle as he shrugged. “They have the superior product. It’s nothing personal. Just as shooting at me, I’m sure, wasn’t… personal.”

“No, of course not!” Anatoly said desperately. “Just business.”

“And I have no problem with that, _truly_, but you shot at the detective. And that I cannot abide.”

And Anatoly screamed.

It was a terrible scream, full of agony and half-formed words that spoke of torment and unimaginable horrors. Lucifer strode past Chloe’s tenuous line of sight, and she stepped out into the room, no longer thinking of anything but the animal fear crawling up her spine, making her extremities numb.

The cabin rocked when Lucifer grabbed a now weeping Anatoly by the neck and slammed him into the opposite wall. Around them lay his men, curled in on themselves on the floor, crying or muttering wildly or, worst of all, entirely still. The fire poker was bent at a severe angle, lying by the overturned table. Blood dripped steadily from Lucifer’s side, though he hardly seemed to notice. And Chloe could finally make out Anatoly’s words.

“Please, _please_ don’t! I’m sorry! I’m so, _so_ sorry!”

Lucifer growled. “You _will_ be sorry when I’m done with—”

Chloe made a noise, then—an involuntary sound between a whimper and a sob—and Lucifer turned, apparently having forgotten her, still holding Anatoly up by the throat. His eyes were red, his teeth were sharp and pointed, and there were nightmares lurking under his skin.

“It’s all true,” Chloe whispered, legs trembling, hands shaking as she tried to raise her gun.

“_It’s all true_.”


End file.
